What is the effect of long-term media violence on our national character? Do we want four-year-olds watching slasher films? Who should decide?While almost everyone has a strong opinion about the profusion of violence-in film, TV, video games, and on line-paralysis sets in when it comes to action. The issue is seen as a hopeless standoff between free speech and preserving public morality. In Mayhem, Sissela Bok reframes the issue. She shows us that we have created a false dilemma and that we need not feel so helpless.Mayhem lays out the arguments and weighs the evidence on each side: the desensitization, fear, and addiction that concern psychologists, pediatricians, and religious groups on the one hand, and, on the other, the threat of censorship invoked by journalists, civil libertarians, and the entertainment industry. The book gives a vivid historical overview of the debate: from Rome, to nineteenth-century attempts to ban all theater, to censorship of the Internet in Singapore and China, and contrasting views of figures as diverse as Martin Scorsese, Bill Moyers, and Judge Bork.As in Lying and Secrets, she puts this thorny question in clarifying perspective, and shows how our ways of dealing with it not only express, but can shape our character and lives. Finally, she takes up specific and imaginative ways to resolve the dilemma, from private measures for individuals and families to large-scale collective efforts.
This book offers a profoundly different vision of Russia under Nicholas I. Drawing on an extensive array of sources, it reveals that many of modern Russia's most distinctive and outstanding features can be traced back to an inconspicuous ...
This is my ground, and I am sitting on it.” In May, Sioux leaders traveled to the capital, where Grant renewed efforts to persuade them to relocate to Indian Territory, “south of where you now live, where the climate is very much better ...
After whites massacred black militia in South Carolina, Grant warned that unchecked persecution would lead to "bloody revolution." As violence spread, Grant struggled to position limited forces where they could do the most good.
Initial enthusiasm soon gave way to rancor, as factions split over where to place the fair. Grant favored Central Park, but public sentiment intervened, and funding evaporated. By March, Grant resigned.
Notified of his nomination for a second term in June 1872, Ulysses S. Grant accepted, promising "the same zeal and devotion to the good of the whole people for the future of my official life, as shown in the past.
Its spelling and grammar were not perfect , but it was clear , original , to the point , and the editor of the Dispatch , George Madden , saw in it a raw talent . He wanted to commission an article from its author , a task that would ...
The millwrights ' and millers ' resistance to Evans's message was so great that their first recorded reaction was : “ It will not do ! it cannot do !! it is impossible that it should do !!! " 9 Nevertheless , Evans persisted in his ...
本書將英語學界的清史研究精華置入整體性的框架中, 提供我們不同於教科書習見說法的清史敘述。 ...
Throughout the eighteenth and early nineteeenth centuries, French regimes developed strategies to control the crucial grain trade.
有人證明唐鬍子在衡山殺過好些個革命黨,因此有人主張要懲罰他。但是這個意思,並不是黨裏開會討論議決執行的,不過幾個人坐下來隨便一說,就白己去幹。我當時被朋友推為執行者,他們叫我帶著手鑰去質問唐鬍子,讓他捐錢了事。我當然聽他們的話,就跑到唐家, ...